Wednesday, 8 October 2008

And this year's Nobel in Chemistry goes to...

...Roger Tsien, Martin Chalfie and Osamu Shimomura for their discovery and development of GFP, green fluorescent protein.

Now this is something that really does deserve a Nobel. GFP and its derivatives have really revolutionized molecular biology. Pretty much everyone who does molecular biology has worked with GFP at one point or another. Since its discovery, an entire field of chemistry has opened up, developing new forms of GFP and other fluorescent proteins, that fluoresce different colours. New uses are being found for GFP all the time. GFP, to put it simply, has made a lot of modern molecular biology possible.

These three fellows weren't my picks for the Chemistry prize, but I had seen Tsien's name tossed around on a few sites as a likely winner. Congratulations to the three of them!